Neoliberalism and Education Reform

Winner of the Critics Choice Award from the American Educational Studies Association in 2008

This book has two primary goals: a critique of educational reforms that result from the rise of neoliberalism, and to provide alternatives to neoliberal conceptions of education problems and solutions. A key issue addressed by contributors is how forms of critical consciousness can be engendered throughout society via schools. This means paying attention to the practical aspects of pedagogy for social transformation and organizing to achieve a most just society. Each contributor offers critical examinations of the pragmatics of pedagogy and organizing for social transformation. It is the editors hope that the analysis of neoliberal educational reform provided in the chapters will contribute in multiple ways to the programs of critical scholars, educators and activists working for education and schools that serve the broad interests of the public and against capitalist educational practices.

Contents: Foreword, Richard A. Brosio. Introduction, E. Wayne Ross and Rich Gibson. Neoliberalism and the Control of Teachers, Students, and Learning: The Rise of Standards, Standardization, and Accountability, David W. Hursh. No Child Left Behind, Globalization, and the Politics of Race, Pauline Lipman. Education and the New Disciplinarity: Surveillance, Spectacle, and the Case of SBER, Kevin D. Vinson and E. Wayne Ross. The Ideology and Practice of Empire: The United States, Mexico, and the Education of American Immigrants, Gilbert G. Gonzalez. Neoliberalism and the Perversion of Education, Dave Hill. Schools and the GATS Enigma, Glenn Rikowski. A Marxist Reading of Reading Education, Patrick Shannon. Paulo Freire and the Revolutionary Pedagogy for Social Justice, Rich Gibson. The Unchained Dialectic: Critique and Renewal of Higher Education Research, John Welsh. Marketizing Higher Education: Neoliberal Strategies and Counter-Strategies, Les Levidow. Critical Pedagogy and Class Struggle in the Age of Neoliberal Globalization: Notes from History's Underside. Peter McLaren Author Index. Subject Index.